Sweet Emotions
by MyWaywardWinchester
Summary: Headcanon: After the boys kill Metatron with the First Blade, the Mark leaves Dean for dead... or so we think. Based on a dream I had one restless night. Takes place ahead of 9x21. Destiel. One-Shot.


**For Sam.**

Sweet Emotions

* * *

Human tragedy from the perspective of a celestial being is merely a fictitious muse. Angels have served their purpose as dispatchers, battling the world's largest calamities for eons, and rather successfully. On the other hand, angels have a programmed characteristic—an innate mechanism winded with their foundation—that enables complete alienation of sentimentality. Explaining the concept is similar to preaching religion to a congregation of fish.

I'd like to think that God created mankind to correct His mistakes; to mold a species that has the prospective of experiencing the life that angels couldn't see with the world's largest monocle.

But I see it. I see life splayed before me in a hue of reds, and in the center was my best friend, a cutlass strewn by his side.

My name is Castiel; I am one of many fallen angels... and first to fall for mankind.

* * *

"Cas, can I talk to you for a minute?"

The angel finally detached from his withstanding fixation on the man lying in his bed. He appeared so at ease. Albeit his better judgment protesting that he was anything but, it enabled him to have some sense of security. He lightly grazed Dean's forearm with his thumb, soundlessly telling him that he would return soon.

Sam led him around the corner of the room, and began sincerely, "I know you want to watch over him, but there's not much either of us can do at this point."

"But what if—"

"I don't think that'll be happening any time soon," he said pitifully, shaking his head to the rhythm of his words. Sam's eyes were heavy, notably, with fatigue, causing his skin to appear more insipid than usual. Cas wished there was some way he could alleviate the man's stress with the touch of his fingers.

"I could have saved him," he said absently. He pursed his lips as if to say something more, but Sam pierced his musings like a razorblade. He touched his forearm lightly, as if he saw through them like a stained-glass window.

"Let's talk outside."

* * *

Awakening from a comatose wasn't too different from before I slipped into oblivion. I was still bound by shackles, no escape from the deadening feeling spreading throughout my body. It's taken all the strength I could damn well muster not to crack. After a while I wanted to let it devour me from the inside, until I felt the chains tighten around me again, and it takes everything in my aching body not to cry out for help.

However, there was one slight problem.

The man who has me chained was the same man I was in love with.

* * *

Castiel was sitting across from Sam when Dean found him on the back porch. The angel was positioned in an outwardly comfortable form, legs crossed over the other with his hands between his thighs. Yet, confiding with Sam—he was too distant to hear what information exactly that he was exchanging with him—he was notably tense, shoulders inelastic, head barely capable of nodding let alone speaking. Sam had a hand wrapped around his knee in both support and concern, head bent to his level, eyes searching Castiel's for any emblem of hope.

_Goddamn it, why did he have to die on him?_ Last he remembered, Castiel was straddling his limp, bloodied body and cradling his face in his hands, bellowing his name several times. From then everything faded to black.

He couldn't breach the line between reality and his angel. He didn't have the drive to walk over and stand before him completely unfazed; make him feel even more overwhelmed by his emotions than he needs to be. Yet, he couldn't just stand around, deceiving his own family in the same way that his father had: creating the assumption that he was dead long before his death.

It had taken one glance behind him, one anomaly in time for Sam to meet his eyes with his brother's. He gaped, one part incredulity two part skepticism, before approaching his spotless stature. Instead of leaning in for an embrace, he slashed his fist across his face, causing Dean to stagger backward. He groaned, holding his hand out. When he lifted his head he saw, through a corner of light that shed through Sam's arm, Cas, same expression painted on his face.

"Sam, it's me," Dean said roughly, using his other hand to pull down his shirt. He bared the pentagram engraved over the tip of his left breast to exemplify that it wasn't destroyed in the hunt. Sam sighed in relief, enveloping his brother in his arms and retracting just as quick to take a good look at him. The corners of his lips turned to a smile, hazel eyes coming to rest on his face.

But Dean was no longer focused on Sam; his eyes were fixated on the angel sitting on the bench. Sam followed his gaze and bobbed with understanding.

"I'm gonna go wash my hair," Sam said cumbersomely, exiting the patio through the backdoor. Dean laughed on the inside at his subtlety. He came within reach of Castiel and replaced his bottom where Sam's previously was. Not once did Cas's cerulean eyes leave Dean's.

"Dean, how did you—?"

"That doesn't matter."

Cas eyed him in disbelief. "Doesn't matter?!" he exclaimed, releasing a kraken of a speech, "Dean, we teleported you to the bunker. Sam checked your pulse several times before he eventually gave up thinking he could save you." He paused, eyes glistening with tears. "I sat there beside you, deliberately waiting, praying to goddamn no one that you would wake up. I touched you once on your arm, hoping that you would feel it, feel me trying to connect with you again, trying to bring you back…"

Dean sat up straighter; craning his head to bring Castiel's wandering thoughts at a standstill. "Wait—you touched me?"

"Dean, are you even—" Cas stopped mid-sentence. In turn, realization washed over them like the ocean would overlap sand on the coast.

"You saved me," Dean said softly. He took a moment to let that sink in before he continued. "Don't you see, man? Even though I died, you didn't give up on me." His eyes flecked over Cas's, as if looking at him for the first time. "You didn't for one second doubt my existence because there was something inside you that told you that I was still alive. _That's _what matters."

Cas loosened his gaze on the hunter and decided instead to focus on the undergrowth next to him.

"And you know what else?"

Cas turned again, only this time his lips met Dean's in a chaste embrace. When they parted Cas was leaning against Dean's forehead, eyes closed and breathing softly through his nose, capturing Dean's essence with his mind. Dean did the same, thumbing absently on his thigh. And in that moment, Cas smiled for the first time in a long time because he had realized something else:  
Humanity was definitely worth falling for.


End file.
